Paul Hazard

Paul Gustave Marie Camille Hazard(French:[azaʁ];30 August 1878, inNoordpeene,Nord– 13 April 1944, in Paris), was a French professor andhistorian of ideas.

Paul Hazard

Biography

Hazard was the son of a school teacher. Starting in 1900, he attended theÉcole Normale Supérieurein Paris. He received a doctorate from theSorbonnein 1910 and became famous for his Ph.D. dissertationLa Révolution française et les lettres italiennes(1910).

Hazard began his career at theUniversity of Lyonin 1910, teachingcomparative literature.In 1919 he began teaching also at the Sorbonne. In 1925 Hazard was appointed to the chair of comparative literature at theCollège de Francein Paris. In alternating years, from 1932 until 1940, he was a visiting lecturer atColumbia Universityin New York. During the 1920s and 1930s, Hazard also lectured at other American schools. He was elected to theAcadémie françaisein 1939.

After finishing his semester of teaching at Columbia in 1940, Hazard voluntarily returned toNazioccupied Francein January 1941. He continued to teach, at Lyon and Paris, and to study. Later that same year Hazard was nominated to therectorshipof theUniversity of Paris,but was rejected by the Nazis as unacceptable. Working under what have been described as cruel circumstances, he completedEuropean Thought in the Eighteenth Century.In the year of his death, an article,Pour que vive l'âme de la France(So That the Soul of France May Live), appeared in the clandestine reviewFrance de demain.

Hazard died in Paris on 13 April 1944.

Published works

Hazard founded, with Fernand Baldensperger, theRevue de littérature comparéein 1921. Some of his important writings areHistoire illustrée de la littérature française(comp. withJoseph Bédier,2 vol., 1923–24);Leopardi(1913);Lamartine(1926);Stendhal(1927);Don Quichotte(1931); andLes livres, les enfants et les hommes(1932) (Books, Children and Mentr. 1944). This last work has been described as a sensitive appraisal of works written either for very youngreaders,or taken over by them, covering all Europe over many centuries. In this book, he was the first to point out thatNorthern EuropesurpassedSouthern Europein children's literature.

Hazard is known today mainly for two works. The first wasLa Crise de la conscience européenne,1935 (The European Mind, the Critical Years, 1680-1715, tr. 1952). This work examined the conflict between 17th-centuryNeoclassicismand its ideals of order and perfection and the ideas of theEnlightenment.

The other was his last completed workLa Pensée européenne au XVIIIème siècle, deMontesquieuàLessing(1946) (European Thought in the Eighteenth Century from Montesquieu to Lessing,tr. 1954 by J. Lewis May) published posthumously in 1946. This work was a continuation of the subject matter discussed inThe European Mind.Apparently, Hazard intended a third volume which would have focused on "the Man of Feeling. On that enterprise we have already embarked. One day, perchance, we shall complete it. One day,si vis suppeditat,as theRomansused to say. "(European Thought in the Eighteenth Century,p. xx) Hazard did not live to complete it.

Sources

• Ricuperati, Giuseppe. "Paul Hazard e la Storiografia dell'Illuminismo.",[Paul Hazard and Enlightenment historiography]Rivista Storica Italiana(1974) 86#2: 372-404.
• Columbia Electronic Encyclopediaentryat Answers
• FromEncyclopædia Britannica